Starting about the middle of the 19th century, New Orleans was the wealthiest and third largest city in the United States, this was mainly in part to the city being a major port for the produces from Central and South America and from the Caribbean. About this time is when the Civil War was taking place. With New Orleans being in the south, they were a major confederate city and it was too long after the war started that Union soldiers took over the city and destroyed the Confederate’s defenses. With the end of the civil war and the start of the 20th century, New Orleans became a city full of life. New Orleans was the birthplace of Jazz, which filled the clubs and dance halls ("New Orleans", 2010). New Orleans was still recovering to an extent from the civil war so not all the white citizens had welcoming arms to the free African American citizens that were making homes and livelihoods in the city. The city experience a sort of white flight because the Europeans did not want their kids to be I school with the African Americans. The city slowly begin to gain its white population again. Which leads into the 21st century, more specifically August of 2005 when Hurricane Katrina came through and devastated the city. Everybody said that the city would not be rebuilt, after …show more content…
The first major issue, which most areas in the city sit below sea level. The problem here is as the city is sinking sea levels are rising. With the rise in sea levels, this causes the city to be prone to a great deal of flooding. To bring this into perspective, if you think of JMU’s campus (New Orleans) like a giant bowl (elevation of different areas) with the center of the bowl being the tunnel under Interstate 81, when JMU receives large amounts of rain all the water drains toward the tunnel (the center of the bowl) and eventually flood it out. This is how New Orleans is, some areas sit as low as six feet below sea level and some areas sit as high as twenty feet above sea level. The solution to this problem is the levee system that New Orleans has in place around the city. This bring our second issue into play, the levee system in New Orleans was built to keep the water out of New Orleans. The city had to replace the levees after Katrina destroyed them because they could not withstand a category 5 hurricane. The city has rebuilt the levees but according to an article published on NOLA.com, by Mark Schleifstein, it says engineers do not believe the new levees can handle another “Katrina”; this is because of the storm surges that follow these massive storms. The article says that Hurricane Katrina had a storm surge of a storm for every 150 to 200 years.